


Come As You Are

by emmram



Category: DCU, Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Gen, Missing Scenes, episode tags, will update both relationship tags and these tags as the fic progresses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2019-12-29 21:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18302072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmram/pseuds/emmram
Summary: A series of codas/tags/missing scenes to every episode of the first season of TItans. In the first episode, our protagonists are moving towards each other, but first, they each navigate the existential nightmare that is their own mind.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: SPOILERS for the whole series, some swearing, lot of dense parenthetical nonsense and fancy formatting. Dick and Rachel marinate in their own anxiety. I’ve also taken the liberty to fill in some gaps that were left by canon.
> 
> this is meant to be a companion series to my [episode recap series](http://why-this-kolaveri-machi.tumblr.com/post/182332535059/grand-titans-rewatch-101). i’m in the midst of my worst writer’s block ever–it took two whole months just to write this chapter; i’m still far from happy with it, but if i looked at it anymore i was going to scream–but i hope to finish both the recap series and this fic series before s2 airs this fall.

**Come As You Are**

**1.01**

Strange things live inside Rachel’s head.

When she was little, people around her would come to her in her dreams in coloured silhouettes, glowing and wailing, ripped into pieces by monsters that lurked in the shadowy corners of her mind. As she grew, the figures grew more refined, more recognisable, but they never stopped screaming; when she heard words, it was only the monster that spoke.

_I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU, RACHEL_

The years passed, and the dreams started to leak into the real world: she would see strange, fresh scars on Melissa’s arms while trembling in her arms after another  _DREAM_ ; hazy, coloured halos followed people she knew and horrible things happened to people she hated; the monster would stare back at her in the mirror now, eyes inky black, leaking venom into her veins.  _TRUST ME_ , the monster would say, calm while everybody else screamed, and Rachel, well. After a point, she forgot to scream, too.

Then one night, she dreams of a little boy on the trapeze who watches his parents fall to their deaths, and the monster does something it has never done before: it laughs.

-

“ _Master Dick, I trust you received the package I sent you last week?_ ”

Dick idly doodles a large ‘R’ on his notepad while wedging his phone between his shoulder and his ear. “I did, Alfred, it came in just this morning. Thanks. I, uh,” he makes the edges sharper, the ends like knife blades, “I should’ve called to let you know earlier.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Alfred says crisply, “ _You should have_.”

He twists the pad until it looks like the R is in motion, bounding across the page. Two tables over, Detective Oyode flings a casefile onto his desk in disgust. Across the room, Johnson is eyeing Dick with suspicious disdain. The air is heavy with the smell of stale coffee; there’s a lingering whiff of cigarette smoke from the balcony where Carter, Takashi and Mulligan take smoke breaks twice every hour, on the dot. The floor buzzes with steady chatter, the clicking of computer keys and ringing phones. Dick’s active cases tray is screamingly empty.

“I’ve been busy,” he says. “Settling in, and all that.”

“ _I see_.” A pregnant pause. “ _And I suppose your new responsibilities as a police detective is the only reason you requested that I send over your modified batarangs?_ ”

“ _Bird_ arangs,” Dick says, without thinking.

“ _Ah. Yes._ ” Alfred’s voice turns fond. “ _It’s been well over a decade since you came up with that convention, Master Dick; I must confess that it is good to hear it again. More than anything… it is reassuring to see that you haven’t decided to retire Robin altogether_.”

A knot of anxiety tightens somewhere behind Dick’s sternum. This is about as secure a line as he can get without actually using the comms in his Robin suit, but it’s still jarring to hear someone just—just say it  _aloud_ like that. Especially after—

Dick’s grip on his pen tightens and he scores across the ‘R’ with such ferocity that the nib tears through the paper. Johnson’s put his coffee mug aside and is starting to walk in his direction and if Dick tenses any more he’s sure he’s going to do something he’ll regret. “Sorry, Alfred,” he says. “Something’s come up; I gotta go.”

“ _Very well, Master Dick. I hope that you will continue to keep in touch_.”

“Bye.” He slips the phone in his pocket, gets up, and tosses his ruined pad in the wastebin. He neatly sidesteps Johnson, swipes the abandoned casefile from Oyode’s desk, and hurries out of the precinct.

-

( _it’s all right. you’re beautiful._ )

Now that (she’s) put some distance between (her) and (her) attackers ( _hot metal projectiles where there should be nothing but fire, but she can’t—she can’t—_ ), the molten panic that’s been fuelling (her) escape abates, just a little. (She) slows to a walk, pulling (her) coat close.

( _it’s cold, but she’s known colder._ )

The further (she) walks from the woods, the less desolate it is. There are more buildings here and more people, turning to look at (her) as (she) walks by them. Almost on instinct, (she) turns into a gas station and makes (her) way into the bathroom, coming to a stop in front of a grimy mirror. (She) is all edge and glorious skin, shining and sharp.

( _beautiful. you will know it. and more importantly, they will too._ )

(She) empties her purse to find documents and keys and a dozen little opaque clues as to (her) identity. (She) is Kory Anders, and the name is both everything and nothing at all. It is everything because it  _fits_ , slots into place effortlessly in her mind like she’s known it all along, but doesn’t trigger a cascade of memories, or anything other than flashes of light and bone-deep cold ( _and unimaginable pain_ ).

No matter. She is Kory Anders, and this is as good a starting point as any. Besides, she is sure that the real her has a taste for adventure.

-

When the fight’s over, Dick changes into regular clothes a couple of dead-end alleyways over and limps back to his car, trying very hard not to think about Batmobiles, or Batcaves, or anything bat-related whatsoever. His shoulders ache with tension and his knuckles feel pulverised—he isn’t quite used to being the ones delivering  _all_ the punches yet. There’s blood and glass in his hair and the acrid stench of used smoke pellets lingers around him like a miasma; he’s stuffed his costume and weapons back in the case, but there are still red smears around the lock and—

—he’s not even entirely sure he’s managed to leave the site of the fight clean; or if he’s gotten all the security cams in the alley; it’s been so  _long_ since he’s done this and even longer since he’s done it  _alone_ —

(All right. Deep breath.  _Deep breath_. Another one. And another one.)

Everything feels even more absurd when, later in the night, he’s stuck in downtown traffic, trying to breathe past bruised ribs and the bite of glass shards in his fingers. It wasn’t supposed to be like this; moving this far from Gotham was supposed to be the start of a clean break. He’d been slowly working up to visiting Wayne Manor one more time ( _one last time, but he can’t—he can’t bring himself to—_ ) to return the Robin costume, trying to reconcile the memories of safety and comfort he had under Bruce and Alfred’s care with yawning isolation of that gigantic mansion, the stomach-dropping terror that he would be abandoned ( _again_ ) if he failed ( _again_ ), and the anger that never seemed to stop simmering regardless of how much he punched, how much he cried, how much he laughed.

Being Robin without Batman feels like something vital’s been cut out of him, but just being Dick Grayson isn’t enough for all the evil in the world.

Dick stumbles into his apartment building, trying very hard not to make carrying a giant silver briefcase in the dark seem suspicious. He enters his apartment—dangerously open to the world but devoid of shadows—and lets himself slump onto the sofa. He’s going to (clean his costume and equipment, scrub the security cam feeds, clean the car of bloodstains and evidence, destroy the copy of Oyode’s file that he’d made, type up a report for his personal log) but for now he closes his eyes and—breathes.

Just—

Just for a minute.

-

The city is drab and cold in ways Rachel is entirely unused to; for some reason, she thinks of old white bedsheets turned grey from use and wear and repeated washing over years and years. Melissa ripped one of them into rags the last time Rachel  _DID SOMETHING STUPID_ , knocked over a vase, cut her hand on the shattered pieces, and dripped blood all over the kitchen floor. Melissa’d spent an entire afternoon scrubbing at bloodstains, refusing to answer to Rachel’s tearful apologies. (The voice told her to break the next vase over Melissa’s head, which made Rachel want to vomit.)

Melissa had washed the blood out of those rags as thoroughly as she could, leaving them even more dirty-grey than they were. That’s what the city looks like: wrung of colour, washed and washed again into grey submission—

“We’re here,” the officer in the front seat of the car says, dropping Rachel abruptly out of her thoughts. She’s taken into the precinct and asked to sit inside a windowless room; it isn’t until the officer that’s trying to get her attention touches her shoulder and she flinches, light and sound and  _terror_  rushing in, that the numbness abates and the voice snarls  _KILL HIM!_

can’twon’t _don’t_ —

The officer looks shocked for a moment before his expression softens and he backs away. “Somebody will come talk to you now, okay?” he says, and leaves. Rachel waits and picks at the fraying edges of her sleeves, wishing—not for the first time—that she’d brought her phone along. It’s not like she has anybody to call, really; she just wants something to do that’s not staring at the walls ( _of an interrogation room, this is an interrogation room_ ) and trying not to think about how desperately  _alone_  she is right now.

A few minutes later, Detective Dick Grayson walks in and introduces himself. Rachel jolts at the sight of him; she can hardly hear what he’s saying over the chorus of  _holy shit! holy shit!_ that’s taken over her mind, because  _holy shit_ — _this_  is the little boy on the trapeze. He glows blood-red, and every movement of his leaves behind smudges of light and colour and  _life_  in this otherwise cement-grey room.

She holds his hands, tells him,  _you’re the boy from the circus_ ; he frowns, but doesn’t tell her she’s crazy, or stupid, or  _BADWRONGEVIL_. Dick Grayson promises to help her, and for the first time since watching her mother fall to the floor with a bullet hole through her head, Rachel feels hope.

-

Kory Anders is on a plane to the United States.

Twelve hours ago, she didn’t know her name; now she not only has an identity, but a destination, a purpose ( _a mission_ ). Everything from swiping cards to speaking a dozen different tongues to summoning fire to her fingertips to the clean, beautiful effortlessness of throwing an asshole across a hotel room has been… intuitive; she thinks as she does, moves as she feels, learns as she touches. She doesn’t know what she will find when she lands ( _knows without really knowing that where she is going is both impossibly vast and comically small_ ) but she’s going to start with looking for the girl in the photo and see where that leads her.

(– _to a bubble suspended in infinite nothingness, shackles around her wrists and feet—_ )

And if that means burning up a few more entitled assholes along the way, so be it.


	2. Chapter 2

**1.02**

For about an hour into their drive out of Detroit, they say nothing.

Rachel is huddled awkwardly against the car door, staring at the floor or out the window. She doesn’t talk or even look at Dick for a while. He can’t really blame her; every time he blinks, he’s still seeing Rachel’s kidnapper’s face pressed against the glass, leaking blood and brains even as he melted from the inside-out. The last twelve hours have been a lot to take in, and for some time Dick lets the empty hum of cruising down the mostly-deserted highway fill his brain.

Things start filtering in eventually: Rachel sniffing, the creak of leather as she shifts in her seat, the whine of the engine, the cold bite of air through the crack in his window, the vibrations of his seat, the steering wheel under his hands—even the way his hair falls over his forehead, his shirt clinging to his back with cold sweat, the sense-memory of hot, sticky blood on his hands. Each of them plucks at his over-stretched nerves until he can’t stand it anymore: he grits his teeth and fantasises, very briefly, about ripping the steering wheel out and screaming until he loses his voice.

Instead, he says: “you hungry?”

Rachel looks at him warily. There’re flecks of blood on her chin and near her hairline, and Dick’s gut clenches at the sight. _God_ , she’s a kid who’s just had two people murdered gruesomely in front of her, and here he is, no real destination in mind, about to get her snacks like they’re on a camping trip from hell. That’s not even counting the mysterious demonic force inside her body or the fact that she’s being chased by an honest-to-god _cult_ —she needs _actual_ help, like something someone from the League can provide, not a washed-up sidekick with anger issues who’s just barely keeping his life on track. What was he even _thinking_ , just up and running like this without a plan, Bruce would be so—

Well.

Well, shit. So much for _fuck batman_ —even his own brain was betraying him.

“Yeah, maybe,” Rachel mumbles to the dashboard.

Okay—okay. Dick can work with that. Make a plan. Step one. “There’s a rest-stop a couple of miles down the road,” he says, his voice sounding remarkably steady even to him, “we can stop for a bathroom break and some snacks. Does that sound okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Rachel says, still not looking at him.

When they stop, Rachel goes straight to the bathroom, and Dick takes a moment to breathe in the shadow of the convenience store. Clearly he needs to investigate what’s going on here, but before that, he needs to figure out what he’s going to do with Rachel. He doesn’t have the resources to protect her on his own (doesn’t think he can stand another second of being helpless as she clings to him, horrified and desperate), but he’s burned his bridges so thoroughly with most heroes—meta or otherwise—that he can hardly think of anybody who would welcome his presence as anything other than an insultingly transparent way to exploit their fraying goodwill. Besides, most heroes are well-connected to the League, and he absolutely in _no way_ wants any of this to reach Bruce’s ears.

(there’s a part of him that thinks that Batman knows anyway. The thought makes his chest tighten and his skin prickles with barely reigned-in panic.)

In the end, he really only knows a couple of people who are still active heroes, and who couldn’t give a shit about what the Justice League thought, or knew. And even if they give him shit for showing up unannounced at their door after all these years—he deserves it all and more—they’re not going to turn away someone in actual need of help. Not even him.

Rachel’s walking towards him, her breath misting in the chill air, sweater sleeves tugged over her hands. “So,” she says, her voice trembling just a little, “are we going back to Detroit?”

“No.” He smiles at her, and for the first time in a while, feels the tightness in his chest ease just enough to allow in a semblance of the light and purpose that filled him the first time he jumped off the edge of a building as Robin. “We’re going to Washington.”

-

 _This is the end_ , Hank says, wracked with pain and crooked in all the wrong places. He smiles as he says it, though the smile is crooked, too, cracked through the centre with exhaustion and uncertainty. _This one final operation and we’re fucking set for the rest of our lives_.

Dawn nods, smiles, only half paying attention to the building schematics on the table. Inside, her heart thunders with anticipation, and her knee jiggles as she draws bright red, thick lines for the path that she will take right to the heart of the fight. Hank’s bait; a flashing beacon to draw fire (and another scar, and another scar, and another scar) while Dawn swoops in, taking down gunrunner after asshole after trafficker, feeling their bones crunch underneath her boot. It’s one thing to come home, weary down to your very bones, phantom punches still raining down on your body with every step you take; and quite another to be in the eye of the storm, spilling blood and laughter and thinking: _this is all I’ve ever wanted_ —

“Babe?” Hank asks. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” She gets up and walks towards him, cupping his face in her hands. Instantly, his rough edges soften, and he leans into her touch. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

“About how if this is the last time we do this, we’ve got to give it _everything_.”

“Those fuckers won’t know what hit them,” Hank tells her, and Dawn thrills to the glint in his eye.

-

When Dick finally lets go of her, Rachel is reminded of peeling bandages and raw skin ( _sunken, sightless eyes and blood bubbling endlessly out of an open mouth_ ) and she instinctively catches at his sleeve, not quite ready to have him leave.

He turns, and for a moment he glows blood red, just like the child in her dreams who saw his parents fall to their deaths, helpless. “Rachel,” he says, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Rachel thinks of the nights Melissa would say that to her, utterly exhausted, shoulders slumped under limp hair. She even meant it, sometimes.

_THEY NEVER MEAN IT._

“I know,” she says, letting go of his sleeve and gathering the hastily-drawn crosses around her along with what’s left of her composure, “I’m sorry. I just—I thought I saw the—the _thing_ that made the other guy explode, and, and I don’t know, I thought maybe it’s here, or maybe because _I’m_ here, _more bad things are going to happen_ —”

“Hey, hey. Listen.” Dick gives her his most reassuring smile, but this time she notices that he doesn’t touch her. “I know you’re freaked, and you have every right to be, but I just got some leads to work on, and we’re going to figure this out, okay? I promise you that there’s nothing scary here—except maybe pizza that’s going to go cold very soon.” He gets up, tilts his head to the door.

 _HE PUTS ON A GOOD ACT, BUT HE’S NOT YOU_.

She nods and follows him out of the bathroom. They eat in silence for a while, as Dick goes through several more papers that his computer spits out. She stares at him, nibbling at her piece, appetite entirely gone. He seems utterly unperturbed at the pictures that he’s looking through—though he _is_ a detective, and (she hopes) he’s probably seen worse things. The only weird thing, honestly, is that he’s helping her at all after everything.

“Um,” Dick says suddenly. “You want to watch more TV?”

 _I want to know what’s going on, but you’re not telling me._ “I’m okay, thanks,” she says.

Dick flashes her an awkward smile and goes right back to his papers. In any case, it’s better than what Melissa would usually do after Rachel had one of her… _episodes_ , which was lock herself in her room and pray, then pretend nothing ever happened, as if Rachel couldn’t see her red-rimmed eyes, her flinches, her furtive looks whenever she thought Rachel wasn’t looking—

_AND LOOK WHERE THAT GOT HER. AND JUST WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO **HIM** —_

Rachel shudders. “Are we leaving?” she asks, if just to get out of her own head for a minute.

“Soon,” Dick says distractedly, flipping through another report. He doesn’t even look at her.

Well. At least that’s familiar.

-

“I’m sorry,” Dick says. “I’ll clean that up.”

And it’s that—more than showing up after dropping off the face of the earth for years, more than bringing some overpowered teenager to their doorstep, more than even cosying up to Dawn like he’s still fucking eighteen—the way he coolly dismisses the fucked-up thing that’s just happened like it never happened at all, that _really_ pisses Hank off. He’s already looking for a broom and dustpan, and all Hank wants to do is punch that neutral expression right off his pointy face.

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” Hank says instead.

This is where Dick will come back with a wry smile and something meaningless and utterly infuriating like _so I’ve been told_ , but Dick surprises Hank by saying, “I know. I’m sorry.” He drags a hand over his face. He looks tired, his hair tousled and greasy, dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t slept in a while. “I shouldn’t have—I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Hank raises an eyebrow. “About taking that kid in, or bringing her here?”

Dick is silent for a long moment. Then, in a moment of raw honesty that’s so far removed from his smug billionaire circus kid shtick that it throws Hank for a loop, “Both, I guess.”

“Well.” Hank turns around and rummages for the broom, suddenly uncomfortable. “It’s what we do, right? Help people no matter how fucked-up and dangerous it gets?”

( _no matter how much it kills you, piece by piece—_ )

“Even if you are an asshole?”

“ _Especially_ if you are an asshole,” Hank says firmly, and hands him the broom.

-

They’re gone.

It isn’t immediately obvious; every struggling, hard-won breath is like being stabbed over and over again, but enough time passes that Amy is aware that there is no fresh agony being inflicted on her, nor can she hear the voices of her assailants anymore. Another eternity is spent processing this and the fact that her body feels… _broken_ on a level that she had never thought was possible.

( _God_. She knew partnering with a Gotham detective was going to be dangerous, but she didn’t think he would actually bring a piece of that godforsaken city _with_ him—)

Her phone’s not far away—she can see the screen blinking to life by the couch as messages come in. She begins the slow, excruciating process of dragging herself there with one arm—the other utterly useless. Her wounds burn as they drag over the carpet and she almost passes out entirely several times, but somehow, she gets there, and presses 911 with trembling fingers.

“Please,” she whispers through a mouthful of blood to the operator who answers. “I don’t want to die.”

-

A hand closes over Dick’s shoulder, and for one long, hysterical moment, he expects to look up and see the imposing shadow of Bruce Wayne. Instead, it’s Hank, face half-obscured by blood dripping from a head wound and twisted into a rictus of agony so sharp it freezes Dick’s breath in his lungs.

“Dawn,” Hank whimpers, falling to his knees by her side, holding her hand. She’s past responding to him now, straining to breathe past the blood bubbling up her throat. Dick’s hands ache from chest compressions, but he isn’t sure any more if they would help.

“The ambulance is on its way,” he says, hoarsely.

Hank nods, never taking his eyes off Dawn. He cups her face with his hand, the movement so gentle that Dick feels like he’s intruding on an unspeakably private moment. “I don’t want you here when it comes,” he says.

Dick nods, numb. He stumbles to his feet, dizzy, feeling cold and hollow in all the places he’d kept under wraps for so, so long. He wants to fall to his knees and sob, wants to reach out and pull Hank by his shirt and snarl that _he never meant for any of this to happen,_ wants to rage and vomit and despair. But the part of him that’s already planning ways to chase down their attackers, the part chiselled into shape by Batman and years of buried trauma, snaps into place, lifts his head, and makes him say, “All right. I’ll meet you at the hospital.”

He turns and leaves, the sound of snapping wire still echoing in his ears.


End file.
